This week Zhao absolutely kills it with some afrofuturefootwork, Jimi Handtrix brings us the current state of dubstep in Berlin, and The BZH Dub Foundation brings the wonky celtic dubs…

DJ Zhao

As always, Zhao kills it. The only DJ I know of to casually drop in Steve Reich references to his mixes and still keep the dancefloor sweating (or even, apparently, moshing). I’ll leave it to him to give you the lowdown:

This NGOMA volume demonstrates this reconnection, after centuries of separation, between African tradition and Afro-Diaspora: between Nigerian Juju/Fuji music and Chicago Juke/Footwork, between Ethiopian dance styles and Detroit Ghetto-Tech, between Iberian trad-modern street sounds and American R’n’B/Pop, between Afro-Punk and Club Music, between Congolese Mbira workouts and Hiphop, between Ghanaian and Senegalese drumming and Urban Bass Pressure.

Gosh, it’s a while since I posted a straight dubstep tape here (in fact the last time could have easily been Jimi’s previous Berlin Dubstep Allstars tape) – I guess it’s a while since any dubstep really caught my attention. To be honest this tape only did because Jimi happened to send it to me just as I was reading about GEMA’s new royalty charging system threatening Berlin’s club scene (completely baffling, if the club owners are being honest about the effects it will have on them, this could completely change an entire city) and the connection just had to be followed up really. This is all fantastic stuff, deep bass meditations with tastefully, minimally applied wobble and midrange. The flute on Datax & Bymski – Planina makes it the stand out tune for me. Who doesn’t love a bit of dubsteppin flute action.?

This is a weird one. Blending celtic & breton tunes with electronic beats is something I’m a fan of (and have been known to do myself on more than one occasion) so I was real curious to hear this mix. Afterwards: I’m still curious. Pretty much the whole way through there’s clashes, both melodically and rythmically, between the underlying beats and the trad tunes, and I’m not convinced it’s entirely intentional, but it works really well – the tunes drifting over the surface of the beats, from conchord to cacophany and back. See it makes me all poetic.